The Plant Forum (TPF) continues and expands the work inaugurated at QMUL by the 2022 – 2024 IHSS Environmental Futures research programme led by Dr Giulia Carabelli (SPIR). The programme hosted a series of lectures, workshops, and activities rooted in Critical Plant Studies (CPS), which is an emerging interdisciplinary field devoted to the investigation of the political and social roles of plants in worldmaking. Crucially, CPS makes efforts to combat plant blindness, a term botanists employ to describe the myriad of ways in which humans tend to ignore plants in everyday life.
TPF is led by Giulia and artist-researcher (and Postgraduate researcher in the School of Geography) Matthew Beach. Giulia’s research explores how people make home with houseplants by conceptualising the possibilities of plant intimacy and their potential to shape plant-human collaborations for a more just future. Matthew’s research has three major strands: creating companion relations with houseplants, examining gelatinous life’s agilities and the materialities of gelatine and collagen (his doctoral project), and linking vegetal dye and Imperial photographic histories centred on the madder plant.
By co-leading the Forum, Giulia and Matthew will continue their planty collaboration. For example, in 2023, they curated Cabinet Cultures: Cultivating Aesthetic, Ecological , and Heritage Value in Human-Houseplant Relations, an exhibit at the Garden Museum in London (you can have a look at ‘Cabinet Cultures’ on Instagram @cabinetcultures). In 2024, they contributed to QMUL’s Climate Action Week with a workshop and events in The Old Library on the Whitechapel campus. They also participated in the 2024 Peopling the Palace(s) Festival with a workshop on Plant Storytelling. They are currently working with Franklin Ginn (University of Bristol) on an edited book about plant futures.
TPF will continue promoting collaborations between plants, academics, community organisers, interior designers, artists, botanists, professional horticulturalists, hobbyists, garden designers, botanical societies, museums, social media content creators, and others while imagining liveable future worlds.
If you love plants, get in touch with Giulia and Matthew. They are currently planning events to hold during the spring term and considering funding opportunities to support the forum’s activities. Please email ihss@qmul.ac.uk and copy co-curators if you would like to get involved and be added to the mailing list.
South London Botanical Institute
Queen Mary Students’ Union
Garden Museum
Museum of the Home